Everything and the Kitchen Sink

[dangermousie]

Watching all these Asian shows made me have a few questions. I know Mandarin and Cantonese are two different languages, even though they use the same symbols. But are they different merely in the way they pronounce things, or how? Are they like Russian and Ukrainian, where if you speak one, you can get the gist of the other, or are they like Arabic

Comments

[ginger001]

I'm sure there will be more people who can tell you the differences more accurately, but what I know is that Mandarin and Cantonese have different pronunciation for the same characters (don't know if the meaning is different) and while Mandarin has four tones (and a brief one), Cantonese has like eight

[aliterati]

From what I remember, Taiwanese is pronounced slightly different from mainland Mandarin--I guess maybe like different dialects around the U.S. Some sounds are slightly different, but someone who speaks one language shouldn't have any problems understanding someone who speaks the other.

[dangermousie]

Thanks. I kept wondering about that. How pathetic is it that I never had any interest in learning any Chinese language, but after watching my melodramas, I wish I had :P

[dangermousie]

Thank you so much for the really good and detailed info. I feel a lot less confused.

[weissman]

I doknow one thing and I got that from asking my wife, there is no such thing as a chinese keyboard. I have seen my wife usea english keyboard to type chinese

Bob

[dangermousie]

Thanks! I wonder how keyboards work then.

[weissman]

They spell the chinese words out phonetically and there is a progarm that converts the phonetically spelled words to chinese. Everybody in my wife office in china uses teh same software.

Bob

[dangermousie]

Thanks!

[fivil]

Wow, Goong looks awesome. I may actually check it out. Available on youtube I assume?

[dangermousie]

Yup. Subbed. It really feels Bollywoodish, btw.

[pashoshi]

I haven't really been commenting on your Mars posts because I kind of suck at meta, and I watched the show so quickly that I haven't had a chance to process all of it, but I'm reading anyway. I really liked Mars, angst lover that I am, even if it's a little overwhelming just how many issues all these people have.

I'm kind of tempted to watch Silence now, after what you posted about. Do you have any idea if the rest of it's going to ever be subbed? I'm not sure I should start watching a series when I won't be able to understand the vast majority of it, but I'm curious...

[dangermousie]

I haven't heard that they are stopping with the subbing (but I am no sub insider or anything). So hopefully it will all get subbed. It seems pretty popular, so the chances of that are hopefully good.

P.S. Re Subbing

[dangermousie]

I went to D-addicts and found "silence" sub thread, and yes, so far, they are continuing to sub it, they haven't dropped it. The group subbing it seems to be pretty busy and relatively small so they are taking a while with each ep (there are subs out for the first two out of the 11 aired eps), but they are working on it.

[wasabi_girl1]

Taiwanese Kal Ho Naa Ho. Man, I love fandom crossover. And I also love when you meet people who can UNDERSTAND! :D

[dangermousie]

I know, I am always half thinking I am going to compare two completely random fandoms and everyone will go: 'whaaaaaa?'

I feel like rewatching KHNH now.